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Friday, April 6, 2012

Arabs boycott Adidas as public displeasure shifts from the West to China

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat runs the marathon in an Adidas T-shirt (Source: The Times of Israel - Kobi Gideon/Flash90)

By James M. Dorsey

Arab youth and sports ministers announced this week a
boycott of sports apparel manufacturer Adidas because of its sponsorship of
last month’s Jerusalem marathon. The boycott comes at a time that Arab public displeasure
is expanding from the West to China and Russia because of their support for the
embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The announcement of the boycott by Saudi Prince Nawaf bin
Faisal, chairman of the Arab council of youth and sports ministers, contrasted
starkly with an analysis presented the same day by a prominent UAE intellectual
that if a year ago Arabs were denouncing the United States for its support of
Israel and Arab autocrats, today their anger was focused on China.

"All companies that have sponsored the marathon of
Jerusalem, including Adidas, will be boycotted," Saudi Prince Nawaf said
at the end of meeting of the council in Jeddah.

Adidas, the only non-Israeli sponsor, unsuccessfully tried
to persuade the Jerusalem municipality to re-route the marathon to avoid
occupied East Jerusalem after three city council members had complained to the
German multi-national. That did little however to dissuade Arab ministers.

In fact, going beyond the boycott, Prince Nawaf said the
council had also decided to organise a separate marathon next year in Arab
cities entitled ‘Jerusalem is Ours’ to coincide with the annual Jerusalem
event. "Israel is trying to misguide public opinion into believing that
Jerusalem is its capital and that is a violation of all UN resolutions," Prince
Nawaf said.

Prince Nawaf’s statement appeared to have an element of the
pot talking to the kettle with the marathon’s slogan seemingly matching Israel’s
claim to all of Jerusalem rather than to Arab countries’ long-standing
endorsement of a peace plan that envisages Jerusalem as the capital of both
Israel and Palestine with the east of the city serving as the administrative
seat of the Palestinian state.

The council’s decisions reflect as much a deep-seated Arab
stake in Jerusalem, Islam’s third most holy city, as it does an effort to by
largely troubled regimes to garner public support at a time that a demand for
far-reaching change is sweeping the Middle East and Africa for the past 16
months. The wave has already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and
Yemen and has pushed Syrian President Bashar al Assad to the brink.

Speaking at a symposium organized by the National University
of Singapore’s Middle East Institute (MEI), Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent
US-educated UAE University political scientist, cautioned that despite
continued public Arab condemnation of US and Western support for Israel and
contradictory policies towards the protest wave sweeping the Middle East and North
Africa, China was for the first time seeing its flags burnt at demonstrations
and calls for boycotts of Chinese goods echoing on social media.

At the root of public anger with China, a country that for
years was respected for its support of the Palestinians and other liberation
movements, is its dithering in Libya during last year’s NATO-backed rebellion
that toppled Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi, and even more so China’s refusal to
back away from Mr. Assad, whose year-long bloody crackdown on anti-government
protesters and rebels has already cost an estimated 9,000 lives.

Speaking at the same symposium Peking University Arabist Wu
Bingbing identified the wave of protests in the Middle East and North Africa as
a threat to Chinese interests alongside what he charged was a US concerted
effort to secure its hegemony in the region. Mr. Bingbing avoided mentioning
the crackdown in Syria but described Chinese-Russian cooperation, an apparent reference
to the two countries’ vetoing of anti-Syrian resolutions in the United Nations
Security Council, as strategic.

China has insisted its veto did not amount to supporting Mr.
Assad and was intended to prevent the situation in Syria from worsening. While
insisting that the battle in Syria was a domestic affair, China has since said
it backs Arab League efforts to find a political solution despite military
support for the anti-Assad rebels by key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, two of the People’s Republic’s key energy suppliers.

Mr. Abdulla suggested that at this point the growing
anti-Chinese sentiment was unlikely to damage China’s economic interests
despite Arab leaders publicly criticizing China as well as Russia for their
vetoes of anti-Syrian resolutions in the United Nations Security Council. While
that appears largely to be the case for the Gulf’s autocratic oil producers,
China’s most important counterparts in the Middle East, that may not be the
same for those nations such as oil producing Libya that have toppled their
autocrats.

Saudi King Abdullah in widely reported blunt remarks in
early February directed at China and Russia without mentioning them by name
described their UN vetoes as “absolutely regrettable.” The king went on to say
that “no matter how powerful, countries cannot rule the whole world. The world
is ruled by brains by justice, by morals and by fairness.” An Arab League
representative confronted senior Russian officials days later in in even
blunter, undiplomatic terms during a heated debate behind-closed-doors.

China last year supported a Security Council resolution that
imposed an arms embargo and other sanctions on the regime of Mr. Qaddafi, and
endorsed referral of the regime’s crackdown to the International Criminal Court
in The Hague but abstained from voting on a resolution that authorized
international military intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds.

At the same time, China attempted to straddle the fence by
cultivating relations with both Mr. Qaddafi’s embattled regime and the rebels. That
even-handed approach however didn’t prevent the rebels from threatening a
commercial boycott, particularly after they found documents purporting to show
that Chinese defence companies had discussed the supply of arms with Qaddafi
operatives.

A Chinese Ministry of Commerce delegation visiting Libya in
February failed to secure agreement on recovering at least some of the losses
that China, Libya’s biggest foreign contractor, suffered with the evacuation
last year of 35,000 Chinese workers who were servicing $18.8 billion worth of
contracts.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer.

2 comments:

I played very little soccer. But I did play baseball in elementary school. Tried basketball when I was older, but was too short. Enjoyed sandlot football when I was a child. Was never much on volleyball, cricket or marbles, although I enjoy marbles as works of art! I learned tennis, but don't have the legs for it now.I took up golf in my thirties, but haven't had time for it lately. I have played pool for quite some time.

I still play pool and golf, so I guess we all may hold onto our ball games of choice, even when age and inclination lead us to put away some diversions we entertained as children.

Sporticos

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile